How To Out-savvy Your Child

And Make Parental Controls ‘Stick’

One of the services I provide for clients, as a computer technician, is a category of tech commonly referred to as “Parental Controls”. These controls limit what the child can do on the computer – what kind of websites they can look at (no XXX, for example), what hours the Internet is available, etc.. (Yes. You can turn off the Internet after 10pm.)

These restrictions can be adjusted and modified to be appropriate for the child… loosened as the child matures, maybe. Windows comes with Parental Controls built in, or you can acquire special programs. Let’s face it, there’s a lot on the Internet children maybe shouldn’t see at their age (maybe.. ever).

In my years in business, I have been asked to enable (or install) parental controls exactly three times. When I – specifically – remind a parent of these controls, and – specifically – ask if they would like me to go ahead and turn some on.. you know, ’cause I am right there? You know what I hear? (I bet you do.)

“No. Thanks. My kid is pretty smart. They’ll just find a way to turn them off.”

Sometimes I hear, “No. Thanks. My kid is pretty smart. WAY smarter than me when it comes to computers.They’ll just find a way around them.”

It would be nice if I had a dollar for every time I heard that..

What percentage of parents think their 10 year old is savvier with computers than they are? Just shy of 99, I’ve come to believe.

A lot of time, I think, the parent just doesn’t want the hassle of having to stop what they’re doing and come and install each update, or new program for the child, and come and type their password so the kid can see that website. Seemingly, each and every website.. all day.. everyday.
But I digress.

I came across an article for parents: Typical Trickery of Teen Hackers

“Tech-savvy teens have figured out ways to get past parental controls, reset passwords, and install software and other activities frustrating to parents.

Fortunately, these situations are solvable. Here are some typical questions parents have about how teens are able to get around parental controls, and some practical advice on how to prevent it in the first place.”

This will tell you how to stay in control, and keep your restrictions in place. Because YOU are the parent. And if you don’t know.. maybe you ought to learn? Reading the article is a great first step.

To read my other parenting-and-tech articles, click here. Also, I have a Page you might want to look at: Safety, Kids, and the Internet. (It is in the upper right.)

Bonus: You have already seen the ads. “Black Friday” sales are everywhere. I want to remind you that this is the cyber-criminal’s favorite, and most active, time of year. It is the time to redouble your “paranoid common sense” and triple your vigilance for scams, e-mails links, making sure the payment portal is https://, etc..

Today’s free download(s): For parents.
* K9 Web Protection is free Internet filtering and control solution for the home. K9 puts YOU in control of the Internet so you can protect your kids.

As if being a parent isn’t hard enough…

The Internet has made your job a whole lot tougher. As soon as your child is old enough to get online, you have to safely guide him through a whole new world: the virtual one. How can you encourage your child to explore wonderful new places that stimulate creativity and learning while ensuring he or she doesn’t wander into dangerous territory?

Get FREE continuous protection against malware and inappropriate Web sites. Download K9 Web Protection now.

* Norton Online Family is a free service that has won recognition for excellence, and ease of use. (To see more awards, click here: Reviews & Awards.)

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Using Vista? Quick Tip

Today’s Quick Tip is for those of you who have Vista, and would like to turn off that pesky pop-open prompt for “Continue?” (aka the “UAC”) yet still have the UAC protection.

It is a well-known ‘fact’ that neither the consumer, nor business, took to Microsoft’s Windows Vista. (In fact, it can be said that many, if not most, avoided Vista.) Microsoft learned from this ‘fact’ and made changes to it’s latest version of Windows – Windows 7 – which have proven to be the right moves.

One such change is the UAC in Windows 7 is much quieter, hardly ever popping open to ask you to ‘confirm’ your actions. Vista users can get this same “quiet mode” by downloading and using TweakUAC from WINABILTY. It is a free utility, which the developer says works on both 32 and 64 bit versions.

I have not mentioned Vista’s UAC here, as I did not want you, Dear Reader, turning it off. Yes. It’s annoying, but it is there to protect you. And you want it. Really. But “quiet mode” is fine with me, as it is the best of both worlds.. so to speak.
(So if you are one of those who did turn off the UAC.. may I suggest this approach instead?)

Note: one thing to be aware of: using this will make Vista think the UAC is off (which it isn’t) and it will give a ‘red shield’ Security Center warning. To stop the “red shield” icon from bothering you, right-click on the icon and choose “Open Security Center” from the menu. When it opens, click on the “Change the way Security Center alerts me” link, in the left panel. There choose one of the “Do not notify me” options.

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Getting Rid Of Malware, Step 1*

What do you do when your PC is displaying all the signs of having been infected, but your antivirus and anti-spyware scan reports come back clean?

This was the case for a fella who called me for advice recently. He had done things ‘right’ — and by that I mean he has a firewall, he keeps his antivirus definitions up to date, and he runs a couple of anti-spyware applications — but suspected his machine had been hacked anyway.

He couldn’t do things he was used to doing (like deleting a file) and his machine was “really slow.”
But according to his scanners, his machine is in perfect shape.

Tip of the day: If you should find yourself in a similar situation there are several steps you can take to help resolve your questions and (hopefully) fix your machine without taking the drastic step of wiping your hard drive, formatting, and reinstalling Windows.

The first step is to use a scanner that isn’t installed on your machine. Here’s two ways to do that: one, if your antivirus allows it (and most of them do these days), follow its instructions and make an antivirus recovery disk. This is a bootable disk that scans your system before Windows loads.

To use one, put it in your CD tray and restart your machine. A plain-text sentence will appear telling you to “press any key to boot from CD…” (if you don’t see this, click here.) When you see it, hit your spacebar or, well, any other key, and then follow the instructions. When it’s finished, remove the CD and restart your machine again.
[note: you may also use a properly prepared USB thumb drive. Click here to read my article on how to do that.]

A second method is to use an online scanner. I have a list, with links, of several good online scans on my Website, here. Quite a few of the online scanning tools will try to sell you their full application, but you’re under no obligation to buy. The big advantage to these two methods lies in the fact that they have not been compromised, or altered, and the files and scanners on your machine may be– the modification being done by the virus or hacker.

Another thing to do is scroll down to my “Today’s free link” and download HiJack This! Run it and dump the result into a .txt file (there’s instructions for this) and then register on one of the HiJack This! forums (there’s instructions for this too) and post your results there. Before too long, an expert anti-malwareologist [don’t bother looking: I just now made that word up] will have looked over the intricacies, and will post his analysis and instructions. These guys (and gals) are really, really good at what they do, and you can trust their answers.

Also run CheckDisk with the “r” “f” switches (this probably will require a reboot) to make sure the problem is not your hard drive.
Click on Start >Programs >Accessories >Command prompt. In the white-on-black window type “chkdsk /r /f” (no quotes, and be sure to include the spaces). You may be told that certain files are in use, and asked if you want to “schedule this at the next reboot Y/N?” Type in a “y” and restart your machine.

Hopefully these efforts will be rewarded with a rejuvenation of your machine, and you will be back in business again.  If not, you have my sympathy. You may have a rootkit and then your best solution is to re-format your hard drive and reinstall everything, or enlist the aid of a professional

Today’s free link: HijackThis™ is a free utility which quickly scans your Windows computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis does not clean infections, but creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan. A large community of users participates in online forums, where experts help interpret the scan results to clean up infected computers.

Copyright © 2007-8 Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Reader questions answered

Today I will answer some questions posted by readers (that you may find useful, too) in the “Q’s and there A’s” format.

Q: taskbar has been disabled by the administrator what to do ?
A: (I have to assume here that we’re talking about the adjustable options found in Taskbar’s Properties.) All modern operating systems allow for multiple users, and the assignment of privilege levels to each user. It is quite often a good idea to restrict what users can do do on a machine, such as guests and the machine is a kiosk.
In corporate environments, schools, and libraries (where multiple machines are in use), it is typical for a single machine “image” to be used, and for all the “adjustable” (think “personalize”) options to be disabled by the Administrator. While this makes for boring uniformity, it greatly reduces the time and cost of maintaining those machines, and restoring them after a serious crash.. they just remount the “image”.
I suppose you could ask the IT department for temporary permission and make your “tweak”, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for approval.
It may help to keep in mind that it’s their machine, and there are very good reasons for them to “lock it down”.

(I have written an article on creating limited [privilege] User Accounts for your children to use. This may be something you’d like to explore; if so, click here.)

Q: I have too many things running on my taskbar – Vinyl Deck, Spybot, Micro Innovations Internet Access Keyboard, Mouse, launch Keyboard properties, and Quicktime. How do it get these off? I believe they are slowing down my computer.
A: Sounds like you may want to manage which programs launch at startup (boot), and stop the unnecessary (non-essential) ones from loading. My advice for doing that is here: https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/manage-startup-programs-in-vista/ (It contains links to How To’s for older versions of Windows as well.)
But, I must also add that, if those mentioned are the sum total of your “too many” list, I doubt they’d noticibly slow down your machine, and I’d look for other causes as well… such as spyware.

Today’s free link: A great CD/DVD/Blu-ray authoring tool, Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 Free, allows you to create easily installable backup archives (across multiple disks), handles most music formats, copies DVDs, and works with .iso files. Possibly the best free alternative to Nero.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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Tell Vista you ARE an Administrator (repost)

This article — originally posted 9/14/07 — tells you how to overcome Vista “run permission denied” frustrations by elevating your user privellege. It is important to note that this can be done to every “executable” (program/application). I am reprinting it, with a different title, because of a high number of reader questions. Have a great weekend.

The Vista security feature that’s most effective — and the most annoying — will sometimes prevent the Run and command line tools from doing what you tell them to do. This is (usually) due to the fact that you haven’t told it you’re an Administrator. Note: this technique can be applied to other programs as well.

I overcome this annoyance by creating a desktop shortcut and setting its Properties to “Run as an Administrator”.
Go to Start >Programs and open the Accessories folder. Right-click on, and holding down the right-click, use the cursor to drag the black Command Prompt icon to a vacant area on your descktop. Let go and select (click) “Create shortcut here” from the list of choices.

Now you will have a new, black Command Prompt icon. Right-click on your new icon, and select Properties and click on the Shortcut tab. Now click on the “Advanced” button toward the bottom

Place a check in the “Run as Administrator” checkbox, and click the “OK” button twice. That’s it!

Now you will be able to use your programs, and accomplish the advanced commands as you expect you should.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul, All Rights Reserved.

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Vista’s painless transfer tool

Loyal friends and true of this series may have the feeling that I have nothing nice to say about Vista. Today I’m going to prove that concept as untrue. I do have some nice things to say.

But first let me review some of the truths that aren’t so nice:
1) Vista is “resource intensive”. That means it’s big, and it takes a lot of RAM to run properly — Vista should be run on a dual-core CPU and have at least a GigaByte of RAM memory (fast RAM memory), and really should be run on two Gigabytes. And..

2) Vista doesn’t like really old devices. It is becoming easier to find device drivers for older hardware, and this ‘truthism’ is becoming less true, but if you have a really old device, (say a printer that attaches via a parallel port), or an old and never-was-popular device (say a very early Radio Shack TV ‘tuner’ card), then you should be prepared to buy a more up-to-date replacement.

3) The first “Service Pack” hasn’t been released yet.

Because of these facts (as I have mentioned before in such articles as Upgrading to Vista) I have advised my readers not to “upgrade” their existing (and therefore older) machines to Vista — especially without having first run the Vista Upgrade (Compatibility) Advisor tool. And I did warn folks that an Upgrade cannot be undone.
Why pay money for a operating system that will bog down, and your sound card and video capture card won’t run? That’s what will happen if you Upgrade a 2½-to-5 year-old PC. Just because it works dandy-fine on XP, doesn’t mean it’ll work on Vista.

No. Don’t Upgrade to Vista.. upgrade to a new machine (that has Vista on it). I stick by that opinion. Unflinchingly.

Vista is slick. It’s more secure. It’s going to bring us (eventually) advances in our video games. It actually competes with Apple. It doesn’t bury Settings so deeply nor hide them so well. It has new (to Windows) features. And…
1) It does some (most, actually) things better than XP does.

What do I mean? Well, recently I had the unique pleasure of installing a whole new network: everything was new — brand new Vista PCs, new WAPs/routers, and Gigabit Ethernet on Cat6. This was quite a bit of a different experience than adding Vista machines to an existing (XP-based) network.. or even of adding XP machines to a XP-based network. Granted, this was a SOHO network of less than 10 machines, and I wasn’t dealing with Active Directory, but the difference was night and day.

I was most impressed by the fact that each machine joined the network, and saw its neighbors, effortlessly. This was easy to see happening, too. Vista shows you a dynamic network map. Routers and the Internet were automatically detected.
Folder sharing worked as it should.. no strange Permission errors.. no “folder climbing”, as with prior editions. For you audiophiles, Vista and Windows Media Player (can) readily and automatically shares (like a server) each machine’s music libraries.. a couple of clicks, for that.

And this is what blew me away– all the machines were to share an older HP DeskJet. And the network’s owner didn’t want to purchase the equipment make a print server, but to use one of the PCs.. like most people do at home. So I installed the printer and then clicked on “Share this printer”, like I’ve done a thousand times before. Then I went to each machine and opened their Printer section of the Control Panel, and there was the printer! Whoa! All I had to do was make sure it was set as the default printer (one click).
Did I say, “blew my mind”? I was floored. No “Add new printer” wizard. No trying to browse to a \\XPmachine\HPDeskJet share. No error messages. Wow. This was Plug and Play the way it’s supposed to be! Too easy.
My hours spent installing the network was a mere fraction of what I was (from experience) reasonably expecting. Not good for my bottom line; great for Vista owners.

For those of you who have ever used a User State Migration Tool, or Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool, to migrate your data from an old computer to your new computer — or purchased a special program, or cable — you know that getting your new machine exactly as you had your old machine required some time and effort.

The owner of the new network wanted me to replicate his XP set up onto one of the new Vista machines, and the usual method has been to to use one of the techniques mentioned in the paragraph above. But I didn’t. I used an adjunct to Window’s built-in Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool, which will be today’s free link.
I downloaded this program to both his XP machine and the new Vista machine. Then I plugged his XP machine into the new network. Surprise! The XP machine was instantly seen and recognized. (Try doing the reverse, and see if the XP machines find the Vista..)
Then I launched the Windows Easy Transfer Companion on the Vista PC and followed the wizard. The two machines established a connection and the XP machine transferred its installed programs, and all the files, and all of the owners tweaks and settings (like bookmarks, and custom toolbars). All I did was watch.
This was, by far, the fastest and easiest user state migration I’ve ever experienced, and truly was like the title of this article — painless. Again, this is bad for a PC Tech’s bottom line, but great for Vista owners.

Today’s free link: When you buy a new PC, you will almost certainly want to transfer all kinds of things from the machine you’ve been using to the new one. Microsoft has “a companion” for the Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool called the Windows Easy Transfer Companion. It is actually a ‘stand-alone’. This tool not only transfers your documents and personalized Settings tweaks, but the programs you have installed. This is a huge time saver.
I did my transfer over the local network, but you can use the other methods of data storage to make the transfer as well– including USB thumb drives. [Note: while Microsoft still considers this program to be in beta, I experienced absolutely no hiccups or difficulties at all.]

Copyright © 2007 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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Quick Tip: overcome “access denied” in Vista’s Command Prompt

The Vista security feature that’s most effective — and the most annoying — will sometimes prevent the Run and command line tools from doing what you tell them to do. This is (usually) due to the fact that you haven’t told it you’re an Administrator. Note: this technique can be applied to other programs as well.

I overcome this annoyance by creating a desktop shortcut and setting its Properties to “Run as an Administrator”.
Go to Start >Programs and open the Accessories folder. Right-click on, and holding down the right-click, use the cursor to drag the black Command Prompt icon to a vacant area on your descktop. Let go and select (click) “Create shortcut here” from the list of choices.

Now you will have a new, black Command Prompt icon. Right-click on your new icon, and select Properties and click on the Shortcut tab. Now click on the “Advanced” button toward the bottom

Place a check in the “Run as Administrator” checkbox, and click the “OK” button twice. That’s it!

Now you will be able to accomplish the advanced commands as you expect you should.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul, All Rights Reserved.

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